Leaving a peanut so that someone might break the shell to the nut inside.

No Holding Back! Matthew 28:17-20

I spoke with my dearest friend today. She is a student at a local prestigious seminary. I have witnessed a marvelous deepening of her faith and her commitment to live her faith for the sake of missions. At mid life she has retired from the corporate world to give herself fully to the Great Commission found in these verses from Matthew.

When I examine my life, and weigh against the bold step forward she has made, I see the difference in the quality and depth of her all out commitment and my own. I am still much in my world, and too little in the grand design of God. The Message version says it clearly: “Some though, held back, not sure about worship, about risking themselves totally.” There was the risen Christ before them, and they let themselves question and entertain doubts. They engaged in various mental excuses to justify “playing it safe.”

When you read this whole chapter, you see how the Risen Christ first had to bring calm to the disciples and believers. They were terrified and delighted at the same time: This Jesus they saw mangled and dead was alive, just as he said. At the same time, seeing a man risen from the dead was frightening.

Each of us has this same basic choice: to deny the wonder and glory of the Risen Christ because of our fear and trembling, or to give an unrestrained and whole hearted “Alleluia!” to the business at hand: Taking the Good News to all nations.

So, as I love my friend, I pray God will do the work of making me a powerful agent for His Message to the World. I may then even join her in the adventure that awaits. No holding back!

Roscoe Expertly Removing the Shell

Rewards Come To Those Hungry for What’s Within

Listen and See: The Divine Symphony

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence . . . "
- George Eliot, Middlemarch